Network Video Recorders (NVRs) are a recording solution used in the security industry. Network video recorders can be used to store video from security cameras (such as closed circuit television (“CCTV”) cameras) acquired at a location such as a business, school, retail facility, data center, or other location, on a storage device such as a hard disk drive. A typical network video recorder may store video for a limited time period, such as 7 days. When additional storage capacity is required to meet regulatory standards, additional memory may need to be added by acquiring additional hard disk drives. This approach can be expensive because of the cost of hard disk drives. In addition, the scalability of the systems is limited, for example, because of finite rack space available at a site that can be dedicated to a security system. In addition, spinning hard disk drives have a limited service life, which may be around 3 years before failure.
A remote storage system, such as may be available in a cloud computing environment, can provide large amounts of storage capacity. To transfer video data from the site at which video is acquired to the cloud over a network, however, large amounts of network bandwidth may be required. In addition, the bandwidth available to transfer data over a network connection can vary dramatically from moment to moment traffic as traffic on the network ebbs and flows. Excessive loads on a network connection can result in a complete failure of the connection.
Compression can be used to reduce the storage requirements for video data. NVR and camera manufacturers have implemented some standards for compression, including H.264 and MPEG-4. Even with such compression, however, the demands on a network connection at peak times can result in failure of a network connection.
While embodiments are described herein by way of example for several embodiments and illustrative drawings, those skilled in the art will recognize that embodiments are not limited to the embodiments or drawings described. It should be understood, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit embodiments to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope as defined by the appended claims. The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughout this application, the word “may” is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). Similarly, the words “include,” “including,” and “includes” mean including, but not limited to.